rescue France ? A little energy, and better morals would do her far more good than all these words."

During the various crises of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1794, Morris, who had been taught bloody lessons, grew firmer in his opinions, and did not cease to cry out to every party that they were losing themselves and ruining the liberty of their country. At last, his disapprobation became so thorough and so distinct, that the French republicans, annoyed by the presence of such a censor, solicited his recall in 1794, for Morris had replaced Jefferson as Chargé d'Affaires for the United States. Nothing appeared easier than for a minister of the American Republic to go hand in hand with the chiefs of the French Republic. But these latter had gone so far in so short a time that Washington, Franklin, Morris, had been left behind. After being two or three times put upon the list of the "suspected," our republican went home, where he lived peaceably at his estate of Morrisiana, and died not a very great while ago.

SECTION V.

MORRIS AT PARIS FROM 1789 TO 1792-PRELUDES TO THE REVOLUTION-JEFFERSON'S OPINION ON THE FRENCH REVO

LUTION.

I think that no other observer was so happily placed as Morris, to get a view of our Revolution. Minister Plenipotentiary of a friendly republic, rich and independent, his relations with those in power were habitual, easy and confidential. As American and Member of Congress, he had a right to the favor of the more exalted revolutionists. Well brought up

and educated, and a friend of de Lafayette, he was admitted. to the drawing rooms of the nobility, and the cabinets of the dying monarchy. While he sympathized in the movement of the people towards liberty, he never hid his pity for an aristocracy which had flourished so long and which was so suddenly uprooted. Therefore all doors were opened to him, those of the boiling revolutionary clubs, those of the hotels where the trembling relics of the monarchical party united. There are a thousand curious little traits, a thousand lightgiving anecdotes, jotted down upon the tablets of the traveller.

You see there how marquises and counts amused themselves on the eve of a fearful catastrophe; how lords, old and young, whose heads would soon be in danger, attached, in the chapel and during the mass, a lighted candle to the cassock of a fashionable abbé; what politico-romantic discussions were heard at the restaurateurs' of Versailles; how the expiring monarchy looked everywhere for advice, counsel, direction, accepting all and following the worst. Side by side with these details, the observant American places his prophetic reflections; the date is there and the date is remarkable; Morris predicts the events of more than one year.

The Republic is about to be established, and he announces it; the Republic will be changed into a Dictature and a Tyranny; he says so in 1791. If he appreciate a person, if he predict a result, time proves, that the man was welljudged, the result inevitable.

Let us look how he describes the materials of the coming revolution.

"The materials for a revolution in this country are very indifferent. Everybody agrees that there is an utter prostration of morals; but this general position can never convey to an American mind the degree of depravity. It is not by any

figure of rhetoric, or force of language, that the idea can be communicated. A hundred anecdotes, and a hundred thousand examples, are required to show the extreme rottenness of every member. There are men and women who are greatly and eminently virtuous. I have the pleasure to number many in my own acquaintance; but they stand forward from a background deeply and darkly shaded. It is, however, from such crumbling matter, that the great edifice of freedom is to be erected here. Perhaps, like the stratum of rock, which is spread under the whole surface of their country, it may harden when exposed to the air; but it seems quite as likely that it will fall and crush the builders."

We are tempted, by our love for France, to accuse the American of injustice; nevertheless when we examine, without prejudice, the epoch of which he speaks, when we look at the Memoires de Bachaumont, the Correspondence de Grimm, the Works of Laclos, the letters of Madame d'Epinay, that sentimental rouée, the letters of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, who loved with so naïvely-philosophic a passion, three men at once, and the facetiæ of M. de Caylus, and the prettinesses of our friend Crebillon the younger ;- -we must agree with Morris that there is not much republic in all that; that the affair of the Queen's collar, the lawsuit of Beaumarchais, the scandal about Madame d'Eon, the antecedents of Mirabeau, the favor of the abbé-cardinal de Bernis, form a strange portal through which to enter into an austere democracy. We must excuse Morris, nurtured, as he was, in respect for the law, for marriage, for an oath, for the sanctity of the family; who has seen flourish, in the midst of this respect and this morality, not the shadow, the bloody phantasmagoria of a republic, but a true Republic, industrious and calm.

Sometime after having written the above letter to Washington, he writes to Mr. Jay:

"When I reflect how very little this nation is prepared by habits or education, to enjoy complete liberty, I fairly tremble for it; it will overshoot the mark, or rather, I fear, has already done so. They have felt too long the heavy weight of royal authority. Now they look with pleasure upon whatever can restrain or break it; they seek a republic, but how will they sustain it? France does not yet know all the evils to which the exaggerated feebleness of the executive power necessarily exposes itself. She only fears the tyranny of power, which can no longer touch her; she does not arm herself against anarchy, the most fearful danger which now threatens her."

This was written in 1789.

We have already remarked in Morris, a mixture of severe morality, and of skilful social finesse. He has just enough of American puritanism not to excuse the slightest vice; and enough experience of the world not to be the dupe of a single false appearance. Add to this that he does not draw brilliant portraits to win your admiration, or his own; that his opinions are neither exaggerated nor wanting, but singularly redoubtable. He shows no favor to pretension. Does a vanity hide itself under a virtue; does a feebleness put on the robe of glory, the American is inexorable. Penetrating without malignity, sagacious without ambition, thrown into a stormy society which marches blindly towards its ruin, had he identified himself with it, like Anacharsis Clootz and Thomas Paine, he could not have judged it; had he only hated and despised it, like Burke, he would have been unjust. But he marched with it, yet kept apart from its follies, its furies, its intoxication. He kept his eyes open, his glance clear, his soul accessible to what was noble in the efforts of France.

French society, so well represented in its greatness and littleness by Voltaire; and which like him is a lover of hu

manity, like him prime-sautiere;* drawn on by instinct, and seduced by a bon mot; destructive, roué, light-headed, capricious, violent; desiring the good, doing the evil; talking virtue, pedantic without knowing it; a drunken marquis, who with trembling steps, in cloth of gold with ragged sleeves runs, singing, headlong towards the abyss ;-all this astonishes and revolts Morris, who has never imagined anything like it. Morris has just left Washington. The most honest people of Paris seem to him somewhat crazy. As for the craziest, they

are wild beasts for him.

In the midst of these morals and these men, he is yet quite at ease, tells the truth to all the world, and plays his part of 66 peasant from the Danube." Instead of getting angry at his frankness, they are charmed by its novelty; duchesses smile on him, countesses applaud him, ministers listen to him.

"I have dared," he says, "to utter hard words, which they are little accustomed to. I told some grave truths, and they heard them joyfully; satiated as they were with prettiness and flattery. Truth is a new and singular dish, which pleases them. It is an unexpected contrast and they like it. I will not, however, give them too much of it."

For his part he does not exchange flatteries with his hosts. Far from esteeming French politeness too highly, he sees, with clear glance, how much of false and of hollow there is in that brilliant and pleasant lie.

"It is agreeable," he says, "but you must be a fool to believe it." Still, he let himself be charmed by a conversation which is easy, always ready, which characterized the time, and which now begins to be merely a tradition. As soon as the first symptoms of agitation manifest themselves, he sees clearly the future of France. "The court," he says, "is

* Said of a person who expresses himself with great readiness.